Newsletter Issue #341 Preview: A Little Common Sense About Plastic Seals
June 11th, 2006The other day I read some stories about a peculiar problem with the new MacBook. Seems some folks have been complaining about excessive heat, which itself isn’t uncommon with these new Intel-based note-books. However, in this case the cause was traced to a plastic seal covering the rear cooling vents just below the screen. Evidently these protective materials were placed on some units to prevent dust from seeping into the computer at the factory, but customers are apparently forgetting to remove them.
Now I realize people make mistakes, and I’ve done some pretty dumb things in my life. But I won’t characterize this particular oversight on the part of new owners with any offensive labels. Instead, I’ll invoke the principle of common sense.
You see, lots of electronic gear ships with plastic sealing, foam inserts, cardboard inserts, tape and other items that are designed to ensure safe shipment. Printers, with all the mechanical gears, spindles, rollers and what-not inside, are quite prone to being filled with protective coverings of one sort or another.
Stay tuned for the rest of the story in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.
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In most cases with hardware, you’ll immediatly discover that you need to remove some kind of packing material and no damage is done. However, in this case, overheating could kill your machine. A bright red seal would be better than the transparent one they are using (no surprise it got missed).
If you put the word “Microsoft” on it, I promise people will remove it immediately (joke).
Interesting side note, Intel chips in the past was slammed for running hot. When put in a Mac, it’s suddenly “OK” to run hot.
@ Dan X: “Interesting side note, Intel chips in the past was slammed for running hot. When put in a Mac, it’s suddenly “OK†to run hot.”
1) I haven’t noticed my MacBook (2.0ghz ) running all that much hotter than my Powerbook (1.5ghz)
2) Perhaps people realized that the G4 wasn’t exactly cool either
3) What bothers me more is that the PPC was “so much faster” until they switched to intel. I’ve been watching old Macworld Keynotes and the Photoshop tests do clearly show the PPC beating the Pentium… but that was many years ago.
At the end of the day, I don’t really care what’s inside. I just want it to work, faster.